Sony Sued Over "Other OS" Option

[BehattedWanderer]

Well, I saw it coming, but I don't think there's much that can be done. The Amazon refund was more of a refund for services that weren't offered, but Sony is still entitled to modifying their console as they need to in order to protect the console as they see fit. That the PS3 has only been successfully reported hacked once is still pretty damn astounding, and it seems Sony aims to keep it so.

This isn't true, they aren't entitled to modify their console however they see fit, because things like advertisements, and EULA's are double edged swords, through advertisements or contracts, Sony is promising in a legally binding way to provide the stipulations of the advertisement or contract and if they breach that contract by taking away a promised service, they are subject to legal penalties.

They are entitled to protect their materials, though, which has included software updates that disable unsafe features. And technically we don't have a contract with Sony, we have a user agreement, mostly on the grounds of utilizing their product for a personal means and not using it for any kinds of unsafe activity. Though, the guy you quoted right after me had a point, they did give adequate announcement that they would be discontinuing that particular service when they announced the Slim.

 

[Danpascooch]

Ventura, please go jump in front of a moving train. You'll be doing the world a huge favor.

why? I think the lawsuit is justified

 

[Megacherv]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

 

[Danpascooch]

Well, I saw it coming, but I don't think there's much that can be done. The Amazon refund was more of a refund for services that weren't offered, but Sony is still entitled to modifying their console as they need to in order to protect the console as they see fit. That the PS3 has only been successfully reported hacked once is still pretty damn astounding, and it seems Sony aims to keep it so.

This isn't true, they aren't entitled to modify their console however they see fit, because things like advertisements, and EULA's are double edged swords, through advertisements or contracts, Sony is promising in a legally binding way to provide the stipulations of the advertisement or contract and if they breach that contract by taking away a promised service, they are subject to legal penalties.

They are entitled to protect their materials, though, which has included software updates that disable unsafe features. And technically we don't have a contract with Sony, we have a user agreement, mostly on the grounds of utilizing their product for a personal means and not using it for any kinds of unsafe activity. Though, the guy you quoted right after me had a point, they did give adequate announcement that they would be discontinuing that particular service when they announced the Slim.

It doesn't matter, they advertised the function back when many people bought their PS3's, and now it is being taken away.

That is false advertising, and a EULA, no matter what it says, doesn't make false advertising legal.

 

[Danpascooch]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

 

[FBPH]

Oh God, this whole suing culture is really hitting its stride within the gaming industry now... its becomming ridiculous, people suing one another over the smallest things =\

I mean, cmon, who really cared too much about "other OS's" in the first place? 98% of PS3 owners don't use the damn option in the first place, and removing it improves the security of the PS3 apparently... so I'd rather have a more secure PS3 without an option that I never use.

When they said "secure" they didn't mean secure for the users. They meant secure for them, as in prevent game piracy. Sony doesn't give a damn about their costumers. It's not in a corporations best interests to care about their consumers outside of their money.

 

[Megacherv]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

But removing the other OS option was legal

Car-jacking isn't, in case anyone was wondering

 

[BehattedWanderer]

It doesn't matter, they advertised the function back when many people bought their PS3's, and now it is being taken away.

That is false advertising, and a EULA, no matter what it says, doesn't make false advertising legal.

It's not false advertising. They have ceased advertising that it does that, so it's more updating their product than doing anything illegal. They never said the service would always be available indefinitely, or for the life of the console. It's similar to Microsoft discontinuing the original Xbox Live service recently, despite all the people who are still playing Halo 2. Just because they offered it doesn't mean they always have to.

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

And I'm not even sure how many problems I have with that argument, but I'll sum it up by saying that you're taking a far too radical of an approach to it with that comparison.

 

[Danpascooch]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

But removing the other OS option was legal

Car-jacking isn't, in case anyone was wondering

Removing the other OS was NOT LEGAL.

It was False Advertising.

 

[Oskamunda]

Or maybe, just maybe, this is a totally frivolous lawsuit that could only hurt Sony and the entire gaming industry as a whole.

The decision to remove the OOS was a security one, and an important one. Reasonably, the only reason to install a different OS is to expand the functionality of the PS3 to support...umm, what was the word? Oh, yeah: PIRACY. Now, it may be one thing to pirate your music, and even your movies, seeing as those acts do not affect those industries negatively beyond the point of profitability [No. STOP. Avatar cost just under $400 million to make, and crossed the one BILLION dollar profit line less than three weeks in the theater, DESPITE the fact that from the months of December to April, Avatar screeners and cams accounted for 40% of ALL BITORRENT TRAFFIC.].

On the other hand, take a look at COD:MW2. That game has been pirated for PC and 360 40 MILLION times. If each of those were copies that had sold, that would have cost EA two-and-a-half TRILLION dollars. That's a ridiculous number, so let's just say for the sake of argument that only 10,000,000 copies would have been legitimately purchased...no let's go lower; 1,000,000. That would have cost EA $60,000,000. Does anyone really think that laying off half of Neversoft and Harmonix was related to "soft markets" for the genres of those particular developers? Sounds more like eliminating your lowest-yield departments to make up for losses [that doesn't mean the market was soft for music and skating games, just softER].

Point is, the thing that makes the PS3 the bastion for developers is the inability [so far] to hack and pirate its games. Maybe that will change in the future as BD costs go down, but for now, if a developer releases a quality game for Sony's platform, it can expect a moderate return on its investment; thusly, the developer can afford to make more games. This is not true for PC or the 360. FFXIII leaked a week early for the 360...how much money do you think that cost SE? Their fault for going multi-platform. How much more money do you think Mass Effect 1 & 2 could have made for Bioware and EA if it had been PS3 exclusive, meaning that the customers don't have the option of not paying for the product?

Pirate anything else you want, don't pirate games...it has a directly negative impact on the gaming industry, and puts villainous consumer-unfriendly powerhouses like Microsoft closer to the top slot to make more and more shitty games and shitty consoles [seeing as they don't CARE about losing money...Windows will always ensure that they stay in the green]. I stand behind ANY decision that Sony makes to increase the security and un-piratability [in-?] of its system. You don't want to buy it, get a Gamefly membership; that way, the developers still get money and can track what releases are popular and therefore make more of that for us. I'd even go so far as to say Sony can put that nasty security rootkit back on the PS3 if it will make it so developers can still make dinero.

 

[Danpascooch]

It doesn't matter, they advertised the function back when many people bought their PS3's, and now it is being taken away.

That is false advertising, and a EULA, no matter what it says, doesn't make false advertising legal.

It's not false advertising. They have ceased advertising that it does that, so it's more updating their product than doing anything illegal. They never said the service would always be available indefinitely, or for the life of the console. It's similar to Microsoft discontinuing the original Xbox Live service recently, despite all the people who are still playing Halo 2. Just because they offered it doesn't mean they always have to.

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

And I'm not even sure how many problems I have with that argument, but I'll sum it up by saying that you're taking a far too radical of an approach to it with that comparison.

Analogies often are radical, that's kind of the point. What I meant by it was, adequate notice doesn't make something illegal legal, so even if you don't think disabling the OS feature was illegal, why even bring it up? It's not relevant to anything.

And it doesn't matter if they said it would be there indefinitely, advertisements promised PS3 customers that they were buying a product that could support Linux, they bought that product, and now it can't support Linux, so it can't do what it was advertised as being able to do. That's false advertising, it's as simple as that.

Xbox live shutting down was different, because Xbox live was a separate service that required a subscription fee, it was never promised in an advertisement that the original Xbox would be able to connect to xbox live for free as part of it's services.

Not to mention, Xbox live is something that requires upkeep, so it's different than something that Sony actually made an effort to REMOVE when it required no upkeep and would remain functional had they just left it alone.

 

[Megacherv]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

But removing the other OS option was legal

Car-jacking isn't, in case anyone was wondering

Removing the other OS was NOT LEGAL.

It was False Advertising.

No. Because it's no lnger advertised as having it, and they gave adequate notice

 

[FBPH]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

Adequate notice was given to those that bought their console AFTER they had stopped advertising the OS feature. Those who bought their PS3 before were NOT given notice that their console might no longer support that feature down the line at the time of their purchase and are therefore victims of false advertisement.

A better analogy would be if you had bought...lets say a phone and at the time you bought it the company that makes the phone advertised that it could make calls on both US and European wireless signals. You like the phone and you buy it. Later you move to Europe, and then the company that made your phone decides to send an update that will disable European signals because it decides for some reason or another that they'd rather stick with US signals. The company announces the update will be released in 3 weeks time. It is of course optional, but if you don't take the update, you can't send calls and can only receive them. Now you're living in Europe, so you're in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. What do you do?

 

[Danpascooch]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

But removing the other OS option was legal

Car-jacking isn't, in case anyone was wondering

Removing the other OS was NOT LEGAL.

It was False Advertising.

No. Because it's no lnger advertised as having it, and they gave adequate notice

First of all, drop the adequate notice thing, because if disabling the OS was legal, then it doesn't matter if they gave adequate notice and it is irrelevant, and if it was illegal, adequate notice that you're going to do something illegal doesn't make it relevant, so either way, "adequate notice" doesn't matter. Also, "adequate" is up to interpretation, so even if advance notice WAS relevant (it's not) saying "adequate notice" is still stupid.

Secondly, it is not false advertising for people who bought the console after they stopped advertising it, but for people who bought the console when it was still advertised as having it, bought something that was advertised as having it, so it is false advertising for people who bought the console before they stopped advertising the multiple OS feature.

 

[laserwulf]

Are there any other businesses that -remove- features from subsequent models? As time goes on, I have less & less desire to own a PS3.

Also, I'm not trying to be snarky, but ask honestly: were people complaining about the "security hole" of being able to install another OS before the feature was removed? Regardless of the reasons why Sony chose to do this, they'll justify it by claiming it's for "security". Isn't anyone who argues against "security" a criminal??? I hate to dance around Godwin's Law, but a lot can be gotten away with in the names of "security" and "for the children". Rather than punishing people who installed a different OS, why not entice people to stick with the default (improve firewall and other security functionality in their OS, etc.)? Then it would be more a matter of "stick with our OS for the safest, best experience".

If there were commercial developers who marketed a PS3-centric distro of Linux, you can bet they'd be calling their lawyers.

If developers at Sony thought the feature was worth including when the console was first released, what has changed since then that suddenly made it such a liability?

 

[Megacherv]

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

Adequate notice was given to those that bought their console AFTER they had stopped advertising the OS feature. Those who bought their PS3 before were NOT given notice that their console might no longer support that feature down the line at the time of their purchase and are therefore victims of false advertisement.

A better analogy would be if you had bought...lets say a phone and at the time you bought it the company that makes the phone advertised that it could make calls on both US and European wireless signals. You like the phone and you buy it. Later you move to Europe, and then the company that made your phone decides to send an update that will disable European signals because it decides for some reason or another that they'd rather stick with US signals. The company announces the update will be released in 3 weeks time. It is of course optional, but if you don't take the update, you can't send calls and can only receive them. Now you're living in Europe, so you're in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. What do you do?

Complain as to why I can't use it in MY region. Disabling the US connection would be alright, as I agreed to the Terms & Conditions of my contract/EULA/whatever, despite probably not reading them.

 

[Jumplion]

I have to agree here, Sony should have found ways to address the security issues (if they were being honest to begin with) and maintained this feature as it was a big selling point for some people.

Yeah...for, like, 5 people.

What's more considering that content purchused from PSN requires one to be online, in practice they are also holding whatever you might have bought from them hostage as well. That means your PSOne Classics, Games, etc... all will cease to function if you can't connect. So basically by not complying your also losing all that money you potentially invested as well.

...no, you can play PSOne Classics, PSN games, etc.. offline. You don't need to connect to PSN to play downloaded games. If you mean to buy those things, then yeah, sure, kind of standard for most downloadable games.

Honestly I think Sony needs to grow up, I'm already miffed about the fact that they don't have backwards compadibility on the new model PS-3s and such. Now they want to actively remove features?

At the time, it was either take out the backwards compatibility and lower the price, or keep the price up when people wouldn't buy it anyway. I do agree that they should have at least some more PS2 compatibility now, but frankly you could get a PS2 for $50 anyway.

And they aren't "Actively removing features". Infact, this is the only feature I recall them removing aside from backwards compatibility. I could be wrong though, but regardless hardly anyone really cares about this stupid "Other OS" feature. Never seen it "advertised" as a feature either, like this lawsuit claims, where did Sony advertise "Oh yeah, and you can install another OS on your PS3!" before? Haven't even seen it on the box.

 

[DoktorSleepless]

The point is, if you find a non-slim PS3 on the shelves, the "Other OS" feature will be advertised. You buy it, take it home, turn it on and update. All of a sudden, that feature is gone.

Maybe you'd like if they took DVD playback away too? Of course, in the name of "Security".

 

[Oskamunda]

Maybe you'd like if they took DVD playback away too? Of course, in the name of "Security".

Oh, kind of like the first-gen 360's [and any other 360 save for the Elite, if memory serves; if not, please don't flame] NEVER supported DVD playback without the ancillary purchase of a $50 remote? All in the name of hardware profitability?...I mean, security?

 

[BehattedWanderer]

It doesn't matter, they advertised the function back when many people bought their PS3's, and now it is being taken away.

That is false advertising, and a EULA, no matter what it says, doesn't make false advertising legal.

It's not false advertising. They have ceased advertising that it does that, so it's more updating their product than doing anything illegal. They never said the service would always be available indefinitely, or for the life of the console. It's similar to Microsoft discontinuing the original Xbox Live service recently, despite all the people who are still playing Halo 2. Just because they offered it doesn't mean they always have to.

The PS3 isn't advertised as that anymore though, is it? The Slim hasn't been able to do that at all, and they gave adequate notice

I'm not sure if it is, but that doesn't matter, because the people who purchased their PS3's BEFORE they stopped advertising that feature, can't use the feature anymore.

But they were given adequate notice, as I said

If I gave you "adequate notice" that I was going to carjack you, would that make it legal?

And I'm not even sure how many problems I have with that argument, but I'll sum it up by saying that you're taking a far too radical of an approach to it with that comparison.

Analogies often are radical, that's kind of the point. What I meant by it was, adequate notice doesn't make something illegal legal, so even if you don't think disabling the OS feature was illegal, why even bring it up? It's not relevant to anything.

And it doesn't matter if they said it would be there indefinitely, advertisements promised PS3 customers that they were buying a product that could support Linux, they bought that product, and now it can't support Linux, so it can't do what it was advertised as being able to do. That's false advertising, it's as simple as that.

Xbox live shutting down was different, because Xbox live was a separate service that required a subscription fee, it was never promised in an advertisement that the original Xbox would be able to connect to xbox live for free as part of it's services.

Not to mention, Xbox live is something that requires upkeep, so it's different than something that Sony actually made an effort to REMOVE when it required no upkeep and would remain functional had they just left it alone.

It's different in the sense of that regard, but it's still no difference in theory. It was a service they offered at one point, for an unspecified period of time, and have since decided to cease; by name, the service they are ceasing is PSN support for Linux-based OS consoles. I see this as no more different than a store providing a special offer for specific products for an unstated period of time, and then ceasing the offer after a given period of time. You can still buy the product that was once advertised, but now without the added benefit of the free hamster or whatever metaphorical object you desire thrown in. You can still use the product, but since they have stopped support for the specific food that that particular hamster needed to eat, the hamster will soon die, and you'll have a product that once came with free Hamster, but now exists only in tandem with dead hamster. That they gave you attentive warning that they would soon be starving your hamster was a thoughtful little courtesy that they gave you. Sure, you could say that the store is entitled to continue to service your hamster because of the initial deal of the offer, but since the store has executively decided to cease service of the deal-specific hamster food, you can really only get grievance reparations for the death of your hamster, which wouldn't be all that much. Not all companies believe in continuously supplying service to things that were a good idea at the inception of the device, but have seen a loss in use throughout the life of the product. That that original use has been found to be a potential breach of security for the product is one good reason to axe the service, if not the best reason. If there's a part in a car that's causing problems, and might cost the company millions in lawsuits and damages (and harmful points against their reputations as reliable), then the company will either a) discontinue that particular model, or b) decide to do a recall to fix that part. Sony is opting for option b) here, by applying the software patch to fix the problem that has the potential to become deterrent to the revenue stream of the PS3.